


nameless in your arms

by the_most_painful_truth



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Domestic, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 10:26:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2306357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_most_painful_truth/pseuds/the_most_painful_truth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They never said it.</p>
<p>They never felt like they had any need to and so they didn’t and honestly, they both forgot. Dean would still fix Cas’s tie even though it always ended up backwards anyway and Cas would still wear Dean’s shirts while padding barefoot around the bunker in the middle of the night and their gazes would still linger on each other like there was no other place they could have gone. Even when they moved it was obvious, circling and circling, they always ended up in a headlong collision, orbits pushing and pulling and giving and taking. Equal and opposite reactions in constant revision.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nameless in your arms

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from 'All At Once' by The Airborne Toxic Event.

They never said it. 

They never felt like they had any need to and so they didn’t and honestly, they both forgot. Dean would still fix Cas’s tie even though it always ended up backwards anyway and Cas would still wear Dean’s shirts while padding barefoot around the bunker in the middle of the night and their gazes would still linger on each other like there was no other place they could have gone. Even when they moved it was obvious, circling and circling, they always ended up in a headlong collision, orbits pushing and pulling and giving and taking. Equal and opposite reactions in constant revision.

Sometimes Dean would hold Cas’s hand and sometimes Cas would hold Dean’s but when neither pushed the other didn’t shove. There were times when need overshadowed the both of them, when their hands would fumble together, pudgy fingers intertwining like a prayer but never, never a proclamation. They did not need to proclaim, they were not on show, and while neither of them were strangers to passion, they were never public about it. Old habits were hard to break in that way.

Because John Winchester would have never approved and Dean had always been Daddy’s blunt little instrument, because Heaven was known always for the nobility of its emptiness rather than the brutality of its honesty and the stars are beautiful because they are alone. Those days that Dean’s hands remain shoved in his pockets and he stammers before admitting any affections, those days when Cas wanders aimlessly around the bunker and his hands twitch and crawl like there was something under the skin he no longer had any way of getting out—those are the days when they showed their love for each other instead of speaking it, because words can be all too easily misunderstood after a life-time of misusing them.

These were two men that had brought the apocalypse to its knees, had sent God back his Word with revisions in post-it notes and scribbled in the corners, had defied Heaven and Hell and Purgatory alike, the angel who taught a nonbeliever to pray, the brother who broke a comet from its chains to spend it spinning out of orbit. They were the stuff legends created blogs about and whose personality legends faked on parody twitters—

and they were scared of three words.

In the end, it didn’t matter.

In the end, they were still the men who could not get out of a bed on Sunday morning, angels and demons and monsters be damned. Angels were not octopi, even ex ones, but wings or tentacles it didn’t matter, Cas was clingy only when unconscious and he was unconscious till his sixth cup of coffee. Alarm clocks were ghosts and they had salt lines drawn around the bed they shared and Sam could pass by in the hallway and receive a bleary middle finger for his fond teasing, the only morning person in a family of insomniacs.

In the end, they were the men who forgot to take themselves seriously, the dorky little guy in the tax accountant getup who rolled his eyes when the huge nerd in the labyrinth of flannel begged for a rainbow slinky, but bought him one nevertheless because as worn down as Dean’s smile might be, it never was any less beautiful to Cas. And Dean would still watch Dr Sexy MD religiously as Cas read, cross-legged on the couch next to him, a hand on one knee, Sam a whistling clutter in the kitchen. And Cas would still throw popcorn at Dean when he inevitably spoiled whatever movie they were watching and Dean would still cheat at poker even when both Sam and Cas could tell, they had watched him lie too many times before to fall under the spell now. And Dean would chop Sam’s rabbit food with the angel blade despite the “gross, Dean, that’s probably unsanitary I don’t want to eat angel plasma what does that even do to human intestines?” and Cas would blink owlishly and tilt his head before suggesting that “angels don’t bleed, Sam, it would most likely be human plasma if you were to ingest any” and Dean would laugh so hard he’d burn the pie because his family was the most ridiculous family in the world.

And Cas knew Dean just as well as Sam, if not better, because Sam knew the color of Dean’s blood when it dried sticky on his fingers and the way he smiled when he wanted to die, but Cas had touched Dean’s soul and known then that to love one brother was to love the other, for this soul was not his to claim. What Dean would not say to Sam he didn’t have to to Cas, but there were things Cas could never do that Sam had always done without realizing. There is a way to learn somebody down to the twitches before a breakdown, the sound of their neck as it snaps without ever knowing their favorite color and Sam didn’t care what Dean’s favorite color was, because it was the color of Cas’s eyes, whatever vessel he had, whatever form he took.

And Castiel would remain Cas until the day that the brothers Winchester passed in tandem, one following the other they way they had all their life, and he stood by the gates of Heaven—still leaning off their hinges—to welcome his family to their new home.

They never did say it, not even then. Just shared that look that only brothers in arms could, that weary, fond thing as tangible and playable as an acoustic guitar, that thing that says: _Hey remember that time we stopped Satan from wearing Sam as a dress to prom, remember that time you drank a liquor store because I dared you to, remember that bench we had our first real conversation on, we shoulda carved our names into that thing, it’s history, remember the way we stopped things as immovable as an ocean tide just to reach the other?_

_Yeah, me too._


End file.
